Surprisingly Improved Sequel

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(talking about Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2) "Y'know, I want to write and direct the third installment of this franchise, and make it the best thing anyone has ever seen, just so I can force critics to say "My God, you have to see Baby Geniuses 3!"

— Ash, The Shitty Movie Night Podcast

So you've read a book, watched a movie, or played a video game, and you're underwhelmed. Maybe the story was clichéd and unoriginal, or it was difficult to follow. The characters were little more than a handful of personality traits. If it was a video game, the gameplay maybe had some good ideas, but they were handled poorly and the effort was wasted.

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The book, film, or game may even have been pretty good. It's just that after reading it, you try out the sequel and you're completely blown away. It's much better. The story is more original, the pacing was fixed, the characters who seemed so flat before are now more fleshed out and interesting in their own right. If it's a video game, the gameplay has been much improved and everything comes together more tightly. You weren't expecting the next product to be this good, but it seems the creator(s) did indeed learn from their mistakes. You're rightly impressed.

There are several reasons for the surprisingly good sequel: Franchises with more regular production cycles can help studios retain talent and acquire financial backing more easily. It can also allow the production team more time to hone the stylistic aspects of their works. In fact, many authors and directors claim that some of their first work in a series was a near miss and they didn't really hit stride until the sequel. Franchises which plan things beforehand are particularly able to take advantage of this because they're less likely to get caught in in the sort of death spiral an open ended series can fall into.

The opposite of Sequelitis in many cases, though sometimes a great sequel can produce a bad third or fourth installment, which would make it the opposite of Sophomore Slump. One rule espoused by some fans of comic-book style movies is that the sequels will have a chance to be better films overall, due to not having to get the origin out of the way.

Growing the Beard is similar, but it deals with a television series that becomes remarkably better once it finds its stride.

This is about the sequels to products that either sucked or weren't that good to begin with, but somehow magically improved a lot in the next installment. This is not about products that were already very good but got better. If the original was excellent to begin with rather than mediocre, then it's an Even Better Sequel. Naturally, examples will be subjective.

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Examples

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Anime and Manga

Birdy the Mighty: Decode is widely regarded as a vast improvement over the original four-episode OVA.

The first entry in Nitroplus's science adventure series, Chaos;Head, was not terribly well-regarded, especially in anime form. Both the Steins;Gate visual novel and anime, on the other hand, are regarded as high-tier science fiction.

MD Geist was a mediocre OVA from The '80s given popularity in North America due to a widespread advertisement campaign by those who licensed it. This popularity managed to sway the director of the OVA to make a sequel after ten years; those ten years of experience are very evident.

The XY series is considered by many fans in the West to be amongst the best yet, while the preceding Black & White series is considered the worst. Ironically, the reverse opinion is held in Japan, with XY being seen as inferior to Best Wishes.

Apparently, Stratos 4 falls under this trope, what with Advance having a better, more sensible plot that the original.

Transformers Energon is commonly regarded as one of the worst series in the franchise for its lazy plot, flat characters whose development is continuously nullified, amateurish CGI work and a horrendous American version with a nonsensical script and enormous plot holes. Transformers Cybertron is a somewhat downplayed example since it's mostly seen as So Okay, It's Average, but it's an improvement in all areas: the characters are more memorable, the CGI's much more polished (if still not stellar), the story has pacing problems but at least doesn't run out of steam halfway through, and the dub had a lot of effort put into it. And it's fun.note Cybertron was originally released as a sequel to Energon only outside of Japan, although it was actually conceptualized as such even there. However, Japanese fiction has later abandoned this idea and now regards Cybertron as a real sequel to Energon.

Many years earlier, the first G1 anime series, Transformers Headmasters was usually regarded as a complete slog - despite being a much-prized G1 continuation, it suffered from terribly bland characters, a repetitive structure, and the pacing of a drugged tortoise. It was followed by Transformers: Super-God Masterforce, which was much better-crafted and more ambitious, but suffered from a barely coherent narrative and having few actual Transformers. The third in the series, though, is Transformers Victory, which struck a balance between the craft of Masterforce and the approachability of Headmasters, resulting in a decently-paced and entertaining romp with beautiful animation and a likable cast, laying a lot of the groundwork for the Brave Series in the process. It seems third time's the charm.

Vampire Hunter D was basically another cheesy 80's Gorntasic OVA/movie with a terrible dub. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, on the other hand, is far more serious, the story and aesthetics are much improved, and the art and animation are vastly better.

Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V was seen as an improvement over its predecessor and prequel, Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL. ZEXAL is the least popular series for its cartoonishness, poor pacing, weak duels that rely too much on Xyz monsters, and the divisive main character. ARC-V brings back the franchise's now-staple darker storylines, incorporating all summoning methods (a franchise first), better duels, and more realistic and serious characters that aren't afraid to be comic relief when appropriate. Unfortunately, while ZEXAL is generally agreed to have improved as it went on, ARC-Vwasn't so lucky.

Comic Books

The comics based on Avatar: The Last Airbender. Beginning with the So Okay, It's AverageThe Promise, the subsequent volumes are each generally regarded as improvements on the arcs which preceded them, up through North and South, the author's final story before departing the series.

Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters was criticized during its publication for its slow pacing, unpleasant artwork, overly cynical tone, lack of focus or momentum, shallow and mean-spirited social commentary, and excessive pop culture references that became dated within months. Its sequels, Godzilla Ongoing and Godzilla: Rulers of Earth surprised fans by fixing pretty much all the problems present in the first series, and most readers now skip Kingdom entirely due to how little it contributes to the overall storyline.

Volumes 1 and 2 of Uncanny Avengers suffered from controversy and uneven writing. The third volume saw a change in the creative team and managed to fix nearly every problem people had with the first two.

Rick Remender's Uncanny X-Force run is this to pretty much every X-Force run before it. Previous runs (with the exception of Peter Milligan's, which was deliberately In Name Only) tend to be criticized as poor attempts to be edgy and relevant, often seen as embodiments of everything wrong with The Dark Age of Comic Books. In contrast, Remender's run is praised for its intelligent writing and Deconstruction of the '90s Anti-Hero concept. It's now regarded not just as the best X-Force comic, but as one of the greatest X-Men comics ever.

Many Venom comics are criticised for being everything wrong with the nineties, with a thoroughly unlikable protagonist steeped in edginess, with directionless plots. The 2011 series, starring Flash Thompson as Venom, is the first to be critically and commercially successful, and is praised for its mature writing and depiction of Thompson as a complex veteran and alcoholic, with an addiction to his role as Venom.

Similarly, Donny Cates' Venom follows up Mike Costa's run, generally considered to be So Okay, It's Average, and also uses Eddie Brock rather than Flash Thompson, who had only recently died. Not only that, but it was also worried the series would be too much of a tie-in to the film. Instead, the run so far is considered one of, if not the best Venom series (to the point that it is joked that this run is better than DC's Watchmen).

The Exorcist is considered a classic horror film, its sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic is considered a classic example of sequelitis. The Exorcist III, while not as good as the first one, is definitely agreed to be much better than its immediate predesessor. This can be seen in the Rotten Tomatoes score with the first getting a fresh 87%, the second a really low 22% and the third a barely rotten 59%.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation featured better actors, no cheap gimmicks, the costumes of Cobra Commander and Snake Eyes were impressive, the effects were really good, which made it seem like more of an effort to be a GI Joe movie this time around than the previous effort.

The exemplar for the series would have to be The Spy Who Loved Me. The Man with the Golden Gun is considered one of the weakest, if not the weakest entry in the entire series, in terms of box office gross, fan reactions, and critical reception. The Spy Who Loved Me, on the other hand, was a great commercial success and a hit with both fans and critics. It's almost guaranteed to land on any "Top 10 Bond Films" list worth its salt, and some Bond fans consider it better than Goldfinger.

It happened again with the badly-received Quantum of Solace, which suffered from the writers strike of the mid-2000s. Quantum was subsequently ignored by Skyfall, which many fans consider to be nearly as good as or even better than Casino Royale (2006). Of course, Casino Royale (considered the best Bond film of the 2000s) was itself a follow-up to the universally reviled Die Another Day.

Psycho Cop was an incredibly generic and forgettable slasher film, while the sequel (the uncut version, that is) was amusingly zany and over-the-top, and benefited greatly Robert R. Shafer's much improved acting (in the previous film, he somehow combined Large Ham with Dull Surprise).

While the first two Puppet Master movies are fairly decent horror flicks, the third one, which actually goes into Andre Toulon's back story, is considered a classic.

Saw VI was regarded by fans and critics alike as a huge improvement over the two previoussequels, and generally regarded as a worthy successor to the original trilogy. Unfortunately, given that moviegoers had been burned twice by those two prior films, its disappointing box-office performance helped convince Lionsgate that the next filmought to be the last.

Downplayed with Jigsaw, the series' comeback in 2017 after laying fallow for seven years. While it only got a critics' score of 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, it compensated with a whopping 92% audience score, the highest of any Saw movie including the original.

Also continued in the Next Generation films. Star Trek: Generations was in general badly received by fans and critics. Its sequel Star Trek: First Contact is generally viewed as a vast improvement, being widely considered as by far the best Next Generation film and by some as one of the best Star Trek films.

Although downplayed due to still not being as well-regarded as the original Star Wars trilogy (save for perhaps Return of the Jedi), critics generally gave much better reviews to Episode III: Revenge of the Sith when it was released in comparison to the first two prequels, and even fans who loathe the prequels sometimes regard it as "the least bad".

Reviews for The Wolverine seem to be placing it as one to X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It can also be considered one to X-Men: The Last Stand, since The Wolverine takes place after Logan was forced to kill Jean Grey.

Logan ups the ante from The Wolverine and is considered one of the best (if not the best) X-Men movies ever.

After Iron Man 2 was Sequelitis for the first Iron Man, Iron Man 3 is considered this by critics featuring a fully scripted screenplay (the previous movies had been loosely scripted and improvised) and a more focused plot with more effective villains and a better personal character arc for Tony.

Thor: The Dark World is usually cited as one of the weakest entries in the entire MCU. The follow-up, Thor: Ragnarok, received absolute rave reviews from critics, and is currently one of the best reviewed films in the entire canon. Furthermore, Ragnarok also seemed to fixed the major problems that have plagued the Thor movies like how the films spend too much time on Earth and that Thor himself comes off as a Boring Invincible Hero.

In general, Phase 3 is seen as having fixed many of the problems that most of the films in Phases 1 and 2 had, namely their forgettable villains and formulaic nature, as well as Phase 2 focusing entirely too much on world-building and continuity.

Downplayed with the FredMade-for-TV Movie trilogy, which is considered to be not very good, but people think that each succeeding movie is better than the preceding one.

The Fast and the Furious starts out in typical Sequelitis fashion. The first one wasn't particularly well received, and the following entries got progressively disdainful critical receptions (53 -> 36 -> 36 -> 27 on Rotten Tomatoes). Then Fast Five was released and was generally considered by critics to be a solid heist movie. Fast And Furious 6 didn't get as much critical acclaim but is still considered a worthy sequel to its predecessor. Furious 7 became the most critically well-received and the highest-grossing film of the series, which can partially be attested to the film acting as a touching send-off to Paul Walker and his character Brian O'Conner (as Walker died during Furious 7's production in an unrelated car accident).

After two movies where Pinhead suffered Villain Decay and an overuse of splatter horror while losing the creepy atmosphere, the fifth movie in the series returns Pinhead to his roots and tones down the gore a lot by moving to mainly psychological horror.

Hellraiser: Revelations was the absolute low point of the franchise. An Ashcan Copy made on a shoestring budget to retain the rights to the franchise. The installment was even publicly disowned by Clive Barker. The follow-up film, Hellraiser: Judgement was naturally a huge step up. With a bigger budget, Promoted Fanboy Gary J. Tunnicliffe behind the camera and Pinhead returning to his moral authority over evil personality, it was received quite warmly.

While the film adaptation of Red Dragon is no The Silence of the Lambs, the majority of critics and audience members alike agree that it's a definite improvement over the film version of Hannibal, especially where Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter is concerned.

Rambo IV is often considered to be the best of the three Rambo sequels.

The first Mission: Impossible movie was pilloried for its convoluted, incoherent plot, and many fans from the original series cried foul at Jim Phelps from the original TV show being the villain. The second movie was criticized, particularly for those who liked the first, for relying more on action than the plot - with the former being too over-the-top and the latter too generic. Despite this rough start, the series soldiered on, breaking away from the failings of the first two installments to great critical and audience acclaim starting with the third.

The Rocky series has a well-known trajectory: the first installment is a classic, the second is a worthy, if perhaps unnecessary, successor, and the three that follow are various degrees of bad. The final installment, Rocky Balboa, may not have set the world on fire, but succeeds in recapturing the heart and underdog spirit of the first two. While not a direct sequel, Creed has been extremely well-received as the best since the original.

The general consensus is that after two disappointing sequels, the fourth movie of the Jurassic Park franchise is an effective action flick that manages to recover most of the original movie's spirit.

The Showa Era Gamera movies are largely seen as goofy and cheaply made, essentially being the poor man's version of Godzilla, and heavily criticized for their focus on unlikeable child characters. At best they are seen as So Bad, It's Good and unsurprisingly, most of them have featured on MST3K. The Heisei Era on the other hand is highly lauded for its consistently darker tone, better stories, and excellent special effects that make for some truly awesome monster battle scenes. They are often seen by fans as some of the best kaiju movies ever.

Popular opinion is that The Purge came down with a bad case of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot. Instead of the titular event being the primary focus of the film, it was instead relegated to being a Framing Device for an otherwise So Okay, It's Averagehome invasion flick; as a result, it was largely panned by critics and moviegoers alike. Its sequel, The Purge: Anarchy, addressed the issue head-on by throwing the spotlight onto the Purge itself, telling stories from both perspectives (those reveling in the anarchy, and those trying to stay alive) and going much deeper into the causes and consequences of the event. General consensus is that the sequel was what the original film should have been.

The horror film Ouija was universally panned by critics. The prequel Ouija: Origin of Evil, however, received far warmer reviews, holding an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the original's 6%.

Cars isn't considered a bad film per se, but some people still view it as Pixar's weakest film due to its rather generic story and being somewhat of a Cash Cow Franchise. Then came Cars 2, which served as a sore spot in Pixar's filmography due to how much it detracted from the original, and, as a result, became their first critically panned film. In noticeable contrast to the two previous films, Cars 3 got a much better reception for returning to the original aspects of the first film and having improved storytelling. Some even went as far as to say it's better than the original.

Planes. The original has a 25% on Rotten Tomatoes, and was generally lambasted as a worse, more obviously Merchandise-DrivenCliché Storm than Cars. The sequel Planes: Fire & Rescue got a 44% on Rotten Tomatoes and is generally considered much better - more interesting plot and characters, good music, etc.

My Teacher Is an Alien is a decent standalone science fiction story. The three sequels, however, are an epic, philosophical, and surprisingly deep look at the human condition through the eyes of extraterrestrials. When people praise the series, it is almost always the sequels they are talking about, with the original being more like a pilot episode that sets up the characters.

R.A. Salvatore's The Crystal Shard reads, especially in its first hundred pages, like it was written by a sixteen-year-old who'd just read The Lord of the Rings. His later novels are a marked improvement in comparison.

Eragon is A New Hopenot in space. Eldest and Brisingr have started getting a little bit more original, though are still rather downplayed examples.

The Sword of Shannara has some rough patches and comparisons (justified or not) to The Lord of the Rings abound. The later books found more solid footing. Brooks has stated that The Elfstones of Shannara (the second book) needed a lot of editorial work, but it's his favourite as a result. In fact, when the tv series finally got off the ground, Elfstones was the first book adapted as Sword is considered far too similar to LOTR to even attempt.

The first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, is a passable science fiction novel. The next, The Player of Games, is the first in which the whole impact of what the Culture is like can be felt, and is usually the one recommended to read first. The key problem being that in Consider Phlebas, the Culture are the antagonists, with the hero of the story being an enemy soldier, more or less, who is obviously none too fond of them. The criticisms he raises of this society are a lot easier to understand and ponder on when you actually know more about just what the Culture is.

Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, sequel to The Da Vinci Code - he breaks away from a lot of the cliches that had bogged down his earlier books (the formulaic opening sentence, the first good guy mentioned dying, a Token Romance) - and spins a thriller that ends up not postulating a likely incorrect view of history, but one that hinges on the idea that wisdom lives inside us.

The Heroes of Olympus: The first book The Lost Hero was considered rather lackluster, with flat protagonists in Piper and Jason, a by-the-book quest, Strangled by the Red String romance and excluding characters from the previous series. However the second book Son of Neptune introduces the badass Roman Camp, brings back the universally-beloved Percy as a narrator and better-developed new characters (Hazel, Frank, Reyna, Octavian). The third and fourth book fall into Even Better Sequel. As all the books are a Sequel Series to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the improvements saved the overall series from Sequelitis.

Live-Action TV

Morgan Spurlock's documentary series 30 Days can be considered this to Spurlock's earlier documentary Super Size Me. Like Super Size Me, each episode explored a social or political issue via a 30-day experiment with a different lifestyle, but it lacked the former film's Anvilicious nature and questionable scientific methods, since it was about honestly examining people's reactions to dabbling in different ways of life. It helped that most episodes featured a volunteer participant living out the experiment (rather than Spurlock himself), meaning that it came off as much less preachy than many people perceived Super Size Me to be.

Power Rangers. While the continuous story of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers did allow for some great plots, twists and turns, it was also LOADED with filler, and the rangers all underwent Flanderization to some degree. Later seasons such as In Space or Time Force have a tighter, more interesting story overall. One of them even got nominated for an Emmy (It was in sound editing, but still).

Radiohead got a significantly more sophisticated sound with The Bends, than they had in their debut. Even more so with OK Computer. Their sound has continued to evolve, but that one's generally considered their best.

Van Morrison's first album, Blowin' Your Mind, was a compilation of earlier singles, including the Black Sheep Hit "Brown-Eyed Girl", and was disowned by Morrison. His second album, Astral Weeks, is usually regarded as his best.

Mötley Crüe's debut album, Too Fast for Love, was a decent glam metal album, held back by inexperience on behalf of the band and rather inept management. Their next album was expected to be more solid, but when Shout at the Devil was released it blew said expectations out of the water. This happened again later, twice. After Vince Neil killed someone in a car crash and served a jail term, no one expected much out of the Crue, but Girls Girls Girls ended up being a great album. Unfortunately, the band's well-publicised substance abuse problems made the tour complete crap, and between Tommy Lee and Heather Locklear's marriage, Nikki Sixx's near-fatal heroin overdose, Mick Mars' struggle with alcoholism and ankylosing spondylitis, and Vince Neil effectively leaving the band for a time, they were pretty much dismissed as washed-up former stars. Then, they released Dr. Feelgood. In just over a month they were number one on the charts. Dr. Feelgood is still considered their best album by most fans.

After the release of their first album, Talk Talk was dismissed as a cheap Duran Duran knock-off band. With each successive album, however, their sound matured and they ventured into more experimental territory, eventually dropping the New Wave genre completely and becoming an influential Post-Rock vanguard, culminating with their final album, 1991's critically adored Laughing Stock.

Some people might wonder why Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's three symphonies are numbered 4, 5, and 6. That's because his first three symphonies aren't nearly as good and are usually ignored.

Rachmaninoff's first symphony was a complete critical failure and flopped so hard on its first (and only, during Rachmaninoff's lifetime) performance in 1897 that it almost destroyed Rachmaninoff's career, launching him into a severe depression during which he composed almost no music for over three years. When he finally started composing again in 1900, he started with his Second Piano Concerto, which is now one of the most famous pieces of music in the entire repertoire. He also wrote a second symphony in 1906-1907 which met much greater success than his first.

This actually happens quite a bit with the classical composers. For example, listen to the first piano sonatas of Chopin, Scriabin, Prokofiev. They don't really have the "je ne sais quoi" you expect from those composers, do they? Now listen to their second piano sonatas and suddenly, all is well with the universe.

Katy Perry was just an unpopular pop wannabe with One of the Boys (with the exceptions of "Thinking of You", "Hot n Cold" and "Waking Up in Vegas"). But then she released "California Gurls". Catchy, radar-dodging, but nothing special. But then the song "Teenage Dream" came. And the whole album came. It changed her music career forever, with a string of #1 hits it gained a legion of fans. Prism, the next album, managed to be alright with critics, getting a 61 on Metacritic.

While we're on the topic of pop albums, Ke$ha hasn't really been known for thought-provoking lyrics. However, her second full album, Warrior, was praised by critics for being a bit more edgy and meaningful than her recent efforts, giving the album a 71 on Metacritic.

Nirvana's Nevermind. The band's first album Bleach is a muddy sounding and sporadically brilliant album (compare "Blew", "Negative Creep" and "About a Girl" with the less distinguished songs like "Big Cheese", "Swap Meet" and "Downer"). Few people at the time saw any reason why Nirvana were any more promising than other Seattle bands like Mudhoney, TAD, and Mother Love Bone.

Imagine if, tomorrow, Tiffany released an award-winning, angsty, introspective, multi-platinum-selling album that would become one of the defining albums of the decade it was released in. Got that picture in your head? Good, because that is exactly what happened in 1995, when a CanadianTeen Idol by the name of Alanis Morissetteswitched from cheesy bubblegum pop to chick rock and released Jagged Little Pill. There's a reason why nobody mentions the first two albums in her discography.

Even as far back as the mid-1980s, Faith No More showed an amazingly promising, interesting and unique sound brought down by inconsistent songwriting, lack of direction, and a "singer" by the name of Chuck Mosley who was little more than a Wesley Willis-esque novelty act that could only take the material so far. With The Real Thing the band's sound and vision became much more cohesive and realized, and they jackpotted on a replacement you might have heard a few glowing things about. Oh and there's also the thing where it had a hit song and sold a lot of copies. And then came the next album...

Kelly Clarkson's first album Thankful, made just off of her winning American Idol, was a modest hit. Its success was credited to the popularity of the show more than to her. Her second album Breakaway, featuring such hits as "Behind These Hazel Eyes", "Walk Away", "Since U Been Gone" and the title track, was huge and established her firmly as a pop star.

Simple Minds' first album is... Well, let's just say that "Simple Minds play Three Chords and the Truth" is at best a flawed proposition. Had they not made Reel to Real Cacophony but a year later, it's doubtful that any but the most devoted punk fan would have had the slightest recollection of them.

The Slits. Though their early work was never officially released, an appearance in The Punk Rock Movie, various high profile gigs supporting The Clash and The Sex Pistols, and a Peel Session (which is more than many of their peers ever got around to doing) firmly established them as a shambolic but enthusiastic Punk band, most notable for being one of the very few all women line ups of the time. When they eventually recorded an official first album, 1979's Cut, they'd learned how to play their instruments and veered wildly off into Dub and Funk territories. It was a landmark release in Post-Punk history, but was such a radical shift in style and playing ability it prompted accusations of hiring session musicians and never actually playing on the record.

Similar to the Radiohead and Van Morrison examples, Jethro Tull and Rush have parallel origins: Their first albums, This Was and Rush respectively, were basically just rip-offs of Cream and Led Zeppelin, again, respectively, then their second albums, Stand Up and Fly By Night were considered improvements, their third albums Benefit and Caress of Steel received mixed reviews(though more so in the latter case), and their fourth albums, Aqualung and 2112 are considered their breakouts, establishing them as legends of Progressive Rock.

It's generally accepted that Blur's debut Leisure has its moments, but is overall a rather patchy late-"baggy" era album. Without the benefit of hindsight, there's nothing to indicate that three years later they'd be one of Britain's biggest bands of the mid-90s with the iconic Britpop release Parklife. (The change in direction- and improvement- started with Modern Life is Rubbish, but that wasn't a major success on its first release).

Very few people rated Eurythmics' first album In The Garden - it was largely ignored at the time, spawned no hits, and although still in print, nevertheless remains pretty obscure today. Their second album Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This), on the other hand...

Shania Twain's first album was mostly-forgettable and mostly-forgotten mainstream country of the early 1990s. Her second and third albums, The Woman in Me and Come On Over, are two of the best-selling country albums of all time by a female artist, and both were loaded with extremely popular singles.

There's nothing particularly bad about the first three albums by Queen - at their worst, they're So Okay, It's Average - but their fourth album, A Night at the Opera is regarded as one of the best albums they ever produced and widely seen as one of the best albums of The '70s. (Rolling Stone ranked it at #231 in their top 500 albums.)

Similarly, their later album The Works was also a great improvement on its predecessor - although this has more to do with the fact that the predecessor in question, 1982's Hot Space is widely seen as the worst album Queen ever did.

1969's Empty Sky was a fairly competent, psychedelia-infuenced debut album, but it barely hinted at Elton John's talents, save for the ballad "Skyline Pigeon", which Elton would re-record as a B-side in 1973. Elton's 1970 Self-Titled Album with "Your Song", "Take Me To The Pilot" and "Border Song" would be Elton's Breakthrough Hit album.

The Score (1996) by The Fugees was a bestseller which met with more critical acclaim than their poorly received debut album "Blunted On Reality" (1994). Even the band themselves saw this record as a failure, because of all the Executive Meddling.

Tears For Fears' debut album The Hurting (1983) received some good reviews, had a few of its songs released as minor hit singles, and got the band noticed. Their follow up album, Songs From The Big Chair (1985) went all the way to number one in the U.S., and had several hit singles that are still played regularly on radio to this day.

The first three R.E.M. albums released after drummer Bill Berry quit the group, Up, Reveal and Around the Sun, are often considered the band's Dork Age. Up and Reveal, while generally regarded as some of the band's weaker material, at least have their share of fans, while not even the band themselves liked Around the Sun. Their disappointment with that album led them to take extra time and care into crafting its follow-up, the much harder-rocking Accelerate, which debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 and is often thought of as the best album of the post-Berry era.

Kill Switch Engage's first titular album mostly went unnoticed. Their second album Alive or Just Breathing, however, achieved cult success. Then front man Jesse Leech was replaced with baritone singer Howard Jones, and the rest was history.

Most of Scott Walker's 70s albums were uninspired, contractually obligated covers albums. 1984's Climate of Hunter was only relatively well-received, but in retrospect it was a dry run for a loose avant-garde trilogy of critically acclaimed albums released across three different decades: Tilt (1995), The Drift (2006) and Bish Bosch (2012).

In the vast, musically varied catalog of the late David Bowie, Hunky Dory and 1. Outside are generally regarded as this in regards to their immediate predecessors. In the case of Hunky Dory, it came on the heels of an unsympathetically produced, cheesy first pop album, an oft-overlooked second folk rock album, and a third that, while a decent example of early Heavy Metal, is not really seen as the best representation of what Bowie was capable of. Hunky Dory, meanwhile, is typically regarded as the first truly excellent Bowie album, demonstrating the man's songwriting prowess in a way previous efforts couldn't express. As for 1. Outside, it was the first to be unanimously regarded as a strong album since Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) 15 years prior; 1983's Let's Dance is generally seen as a good pop-rock album, but is by no means considered his best, Tonight and the original version of Never Let Me Down are more often than not seen as dull and overproduced, the two albums with Tin Machine were outright despised in their time (though have since become Vindicated by History), Black Tie White Noise was and still is hugely divisive in terms of its quality, and The Buddha Of Suburbia was so badly overlooked that it was outright taken out of print until 2007. Knowing that, the sheer amount of acclaim and recognition that 1. Outside got blindsided the music scene, who had generally felt until then that Bowie had lost his touch as an artist. While his next two albums would also be fairly divisive, it's generally agreed upon that 1. Outside (if not Black Tie White Noise) was the point where Bowie finally got back on his feet and came out swinging.

Naked, the eighth and final Talking Heads album, is seen as this, coming after the much-despised True Stories (itself the only Talking Heads album to near-consistently receive middling to negative reviews).

The Moody Blues' debut, The Magnificent Moodies, is generally considered forgettable at best, but their follow-up with new addition Justin Hayward, Days of Future Passed, is considered one of the best albums of the late 60s, and laid the template for Progressive Rock.

Pinball

The first pinball machine themed on The Simpsons, made by Data East and sharing the same name as the show, is widely considered a competent but unremarkable table, with simplistic rules that have nothing to do with the show, a tendency to lose the ball even when playing well, and a sparse sound package with minimalistic quotes or clips taken from the show. 13 years later, Stern released The Simpsons Pinball Party, with a complex set of rules deeply integrated with the show, more things to do on the machine with nothing aimed at the drain, and extensive voice work from the actors recorded just for the machine. The Simpsons Pinball Party is considered by pinball fans to be one of Stern's greatest pinball machines, if not one of the greatest pinball machines ever made.

Tabletop Games

Most of Matt Ward's 5th edition codexes are rather divisive among Warhammer 40,000 fans. The Space Marines codex has some divisive fluff. The Blood Angels Codex has several Game-Breaker elements, while the Grey Knights codex has both. The reaction to the news that Ward would be writing the 5th Edition Necrons codex was... less than stellar. But when the codex was released, it turned out that Necrons Codex was mechanically well balanced, and while it did introduce several massive retcons to the existing Necrons fluff, most fans agree that those changes were long overdue and rescued Necrons from being a Generic Doomsday Villain.

Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015) had very little in the way of content—unlike the original two games, which had a dedicated story mode, the 2015 version had only a small number of cutscenes "purchased" with Memoria earned from fighting battles, like the extra character costumes. This, along with the various gameplay changes, resulted in a somewhat tepid reception. 2017's Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia has been received more warmly thanks to its more traditional and strategy-based battle system, plus a surprisingly interesting plot and good characterization despite being a gachapon mobile game.

The original 1.0 release of Final Fantasy XIV had horrendously unoptimized graphics note They looked nice, but unless you had a high-end PC, your framerates would suffer gravely, unintuitive controls and user interface, and a grind to rival that of the worst free-to-play MMO. So abysmal was its failure that it nearly tanked Square-Enix, got the lead developer fired, and was deemed a lost cause by the new lead developer. The relaunch and continuation of the game's narrative, subtitled A Realm Reborn, was practically a different game altogether, and was better in nearly every way imaginable: graphics that looked good and ran well on even a mid-tier PC, and controls so streamlined that it is possible to play even on a gamepad, helped to ensure the game would not only bring Square back from the brink, but become a fixture of the MMO scene for years to come.

Whilst the second game's campaign consisted of mostly stand-alone missions, the third game has a much stronger, inter-connected storyline that culminated in the reveal of the series villain. Whilst not quite as fast-paced and insane as the previous entry and with a weaker multi-player, the faults of both games balance each other out and they're often considered on par with each other, with which is better depending largely on one's personal preferences (most fans do consider them both great games however).

Zone of the Enders sold well mostly because it came with a demo for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The game itself was decent enough but suffered from repetitive battles, criminal shortness and whiny and cliched characters, leading to a somewhat mixed reaction. As such, many people who liked the original concept were happy to see the sequel tighten up the controls, give you twice as many options in battle and include a long and interesting plot to follow. They were even more surprised to see whiny and annoying characters in the first game return in style, having leveled in badass in the intervening time between games.

Bloody Roar was an obscure, poorly balanced mess of a game, with overly simple but awkward controls, poor AI, and a wannabe SNK Boss, thus the only appeal of the game was its relative simplicity and novelty, and possible pandering to furries (or Alice). Bloody Roar 2, however, was an elegant masterpiece, fixing the system into something much less cumbersome and very easy to play, yet empathizing mind games and strategies, and allowing the player (or CPU) to easily counter fools who would try to button mash, the balance was much better (though still far from perfect..), Story mode was introduced, and the game's story improved tenfold, the AI was dramatically improved, the low levels still being fairly easy and welcoming to new players (you could button mash most of the opponents on setting 1 and 2, though if you tried it on the final boss you would be horribly beaten down) and the hard levels capable of challenging an experienced and intelligent player, and the Final Boss was extremely hard and clever, yet he was still balanced for VS play, and fought fairly (no reading your buttons, or moving at impossible speeds, or moves that take off half your life in one hit, though he could combo you painfully). Sadly the game only managed a small yet strong fanbase, possibly due to the first game, and the lack of a budget. The later games are inferior; 3 and Primal Fury/Extreme are still fun, but 4 managed to kill the entire franchise.

As a note, Dynasty Warriors 1 is not part of the same series, which is why the Japanese series numbers are one less than the NA series numbers.

The crossover series Warriors Orochi had a surprisingly improved third game. While it stays true to the Warriors formula of "kill as many bad guys as possible", it also added a level editor, cooperative and online play, a single overarching story arc in place of the usual faction-based approach, and a ginormous cast of characters from the series' historynote A total of 132 characters from both sides as of Dynasty Warriors 7 and Samurai Warriors 3, along with guest appearances from other famous Tecmo and Koei games such as Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive, and Bladestorm The Hundred Years War.

It's also agreed that Dynasty Warriors 7 was a vast improvement over the previous installment (which was certainly a step back from the other games).

Phantasy Star Universe did a lot of things well, including a fully-featured single-player campaign, and an expansive character creation system. Unfortunately, it also stumbled in many respects: the gameplay was criticized for being stale and boring, the single-player campaign had a fairly laughable story, and the international localizations were missing content from the Japanese version. It would not be until the move to the Playstation Portable, with Phantasy Star Portable, that the series Grew the Beard: what the series lost in online multiplayer, it made up for in improved narratives and fine-tuned mechanics which would serve as inspiration for Phantasy Star Online 2.

Hitman: Codename 47 featured a good concept but had very twitchy AI, a buggy disguise system, and no ability to save during missions (apparently as a way of artificially lengthening the game). Silent Assassin added the ability to save as well making improvements on the shortfalls of the original, as did each installment afterwards. Contracts also added better non-lethal takedown methods and Blood Money added the ability to use the environment to make your kills look like accidents.

Also, Contracts was mostly a remake of Codename 47 with gameplay and level-design improvements, justified through unreliable memories of the player character as his life is flashing before his eyes during a near death experience. Because of this (and because the first game was PC-only while the others had console ports) the "Hitman Trilogy" re-release only features the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th games.

The first Frogger game from Hasbro, Frogger: He's Back!, received a mixed-to-negative response from critics due to the game's high level of difficulty, which can largely chalked up to the gameplay being a awkward mix of the original arcade game's rules (three lives, One-Hit-Point Wonder, no checkpoints) imposed onto a puzzle platformer (the frogs the player has to collect are scattered in maze-like levels, filled with all sorts of deadly hazards). Also owing to the difficulty was the game's realistic Jump Physics controls and occasional bouts of Camera Screw. The sequel Frogger 2: Swampy's Revenge, developed by Blitz Games (the first game was made by SCE Cambridge), retooled the gameplay into a more conventional platformer (the maze-like levels are now streamlined into a linear direction so players no longer have to search for the frogs) and toned down the game's difficulty (the frogs now act as checkpoints, and lives are easier to obtain). The game also had better controls, a better camera, and added collectable coins, which unlocked more characters and multiplayer modes. The result was Frogger 2 being much more positively received by reviewers.

While the earlier Armored Core games had their own fandom, the games had really problematic graphics, confusing storylines, and really, really laggy controls. It wasn't until Master of Arena that the arena system even came in, and until the 3 series that the graphics and controls received good reviews.

Mobile Suit Gundam did not have a pleasant entry to the world of 3D PS2 gaming. Journey to Jaburo was aimed fully at the fanboys with loads of FMV and well-done audio, but horrible in-game graphics and controls combined with lackluster melee combat ruined the game even for many fans of the series, and worried fans were concerned that the series would be abandoned or left as schlock. Federation vs Zeon managed to make a surprisingly good VirtualOn knockoff with a worthwhile campaign mode and decent replay value. Zeonic Front actually made an enjoyable squad-based tactics game with actually memorable original characters and strategy, and Encounters in Space was likewise playable even for those that weren't already into the series.

The Gundam Vs Series went through Sequelitis (AEUG vs Titans and Gundam vs Zeta Gundam, which were little more than Fed vs Zeon with new machines) before swinging back around into this trope's territory with the Alliance vs ZAFT games (which refined the game engine by speeding things up, making melee more viable, and adding in new tricks like boost dashing and shield defense) and the Gundam vs Gundam games (which continued the refinements while bringing in mecha from the Gundam franchise's 30-year history rather than focusing on just a single show at a time).

Lufia & The Fortress of Doom was a bog-standard RPG. Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals added puzzles, a more compelling storyline, one of the first randomised bonus dungeons, fun-to-use and not-too-rare random drops that give you special abilities... and created one of the best SNES-era RPGs. Had the developers not run out of budget or time for a couple towers late in the game (the only puzzle-free dungeons), it would be perfection.

The first two Grand Theft Auto games were mild successes that garnered mixed reviews due to somewhat dodgy gameplay and older style graphics. The only real reason why they attracted much attention was because of the controversy that they caused — which had been largely whipped by the developers for exactly this reason. With the jump to 3D in Grand Theft Auto III, the game garnered near universal acclaim, kicked up a firestorm of controversy, and changed the entire industry with its Wide Open Sandbox gameplay.

Metal Gear Ac!d was ambitious, but very unrefined, with potentially broken gameplay. AC!D 2 sharpened the graphics, tidied up the engine, made the story more coherent, and added a lot of depth and spontaneity to the gameplay.

AC!D 2 also played to the fans of the first by bringing back what many would acknowledge as the first game's best moment - as the final boss of that game comes back (and, in a masterful bit of foreshadowing, you run on top of it without noticing unless you really paid attention), only tightened and with a potentially nasty time limit to make it harder.

The King of Fighters '94 was a very good game, but The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard and the controls are tough to get used to, although the music is awesome. '95 has some improvements, but the AI is even worse. The King of Fighters '96 is widely considered the point where everything really took off.

KOF XIII made up for KOF XII's deficiencies in a major way, keeping the high-definition visuals and bringing back some of the fan-favorite characters that were left out of XII, as well as a tutorial mode and a story mode that chronicles the final events of the Tales of Ash Saga.

Conflict FreeSpace: The Great War was a fun space combat simulation game with a nice game engine and a solid storyline, but it wasn't outstanding in any field. The sequel, FreeSpace 2, was darker, with a far more gripping and surprising storyline, vastly-improved combat, visuals that still impress today and a jaw-dropping and somewhat ambiguous ending that has provoked debate ever since. FreeSpace 2 was such an awesome space-combat game it killed the genre stone dead by making every other game in the genre redundant... a problem that was exacerbated by it being an Acclaimed Flop.

How good is FreeSpace 2? The fan community has released several professional-quality campaigns, long since taken over operating the multiplayer component, made several total conversions (the most well-known turns FreeSpace 2 into Babylon 5: The Videogame,) and to top if off, they've been upgrading the engine non-stop since the source-code was released. On a decent computer, the source-code project makes the game look like it came out two or three years ago, when, in fact, it's over a decade old.

After Angel of Darkness and the last game or two before that (along with the second movie) many considered the Tomb Raider franchise beyond saving, especially after its developer, Core Design, was stripped from the rights to the title. But a change to another developer brought the series back again with Legend which went on to be the fastest selling (note, not highest selling) game in the series so far and got high critical acclaim. Depending on your feelings about many of the changes in Legend this can also extend to Anniversary and/or Underworld.

A rollercoaster with the Ace Combat core series. The localization of Electrosphere had its entire plot surgically removed. Shattered Skies fared better, and had a better plot to begin with, but its strength was in the delivery. The Unsung War brings everything together with sympathetic characters, a clever plot, and the astounding, epic presentation the series is known for, which it continued with for The Belkan War, except bigger. Fires of Liberation, however, goes a step back with a textbook, straightforward plot and a cast consisting of only supporting characters, none of whom get much individual screen time or, indeed, even matter until the very end.

The original Super Robot Wars game on the Nintendo Game Boy was clunky, with minimal plot and a lot of Guide Dang It! moments. Each game's taken steps since then, with its first sequel actually using the pilots and storylines from the series in question, and producing Banpresto's first Original Generation batch, featuring Masaki Ando, Bian Zoldark, and Shu Shirakawa.

Similarly, the first Super Robot Wars Original Generation was fairly clunky compared to the earlier SRW games on the Game Boy Advance, with a pretty basic story and minimal animation and effects. It feels a lot like a side-project Banpresto wasn't ready to commit to (it was, after all, essentially a crossover without the crossing over). Compare to Original Generation 2, which featured more plots and better animation and effects that nearly match the first Alpha game on the PS1.

On the localization front for Super Robot Wars X, at any rate. While X is not the first SRW to get an English option but not an official release in most Anglophone territories, previous efforts at putting an English option in could best be described as "serviceable". The team Namco Bandai assembled for X, however, was made up of a number of long time SRW fans, and it really shows; as much as the actual plotting can be kind of bad (as noted above), the quality of the English script is considered a high-water mark for the entire franchise and contributed heavily to X becoming an underground success and growing the English SRW fanbase and bringing lapsed fans back in.

Saints Row was your stereotypical Wide Open Sandbox, released to faint praise for having a solid, fun game, but still being a shameless GTA clone. Only one thing really changed between its release and its sequel—GTA decided it wanted to be taken seriously, and we got GTA IV. Saints Row 2 went the other way—the main character became an over-the-top Heroic Comedic Sociopath and the game took Refuge in Audacity. Critics loved it, as did players. Then The Third pushed it even further. Although some people bash it for being outright strange, a lot of players enjoyed it for the pure insanity and strangeness they gave you to play around with in an open world, in a more stark contrast to GTA which is serious in nature.

The original Star Control was a 2D space combat sim with hardly any story elements (at least not in the game.). Star Control II kept the good parts (the space combat, aka Super Melee) and added a surprisingly complex and fun story mode.

Downplayed with 50 Cent Bulletproof, which was trashed for all the bugs and bad gameplay. (The PSP version was by a different developer and fared slightly better.) 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand received above average scores due to great control based on established shooter conventions, and a story that's praised as hilariously So Bad, It's Good.

The original Killzone was a heavily hyped PS2 shooter that ended up falling quite short of expectations, though it wasn't bad at all, just mediocre. Killzone 2, on the other hand, has been well received by both critics and gamers, and "lived up to the hype".

The first two Wangan Midnight arcade games were basically just Tokyo Xtreme Racer with Wangan Midnight characters and stage-based gameplay, with few players remembering or thoroughly enjoying them. Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, on the other hand, gave Initial D Arcade Stage a run for its money.

The first Initial D Arcade Stage had a poorly done multiplayer mode which, among other problems, required the second player to insert his/her coin(s) within 9 seconds of the first player, and had no incentive whatsoever to play a head-to-head battle over just playing Time Attack mode. Initial D Arcade Stage Ver.2 significantly improved the multiplayer mode.

While Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice does have its detractors and isn't considered a great game, many journalists and fans are in agreement that it's certainly a step up from the previous two Sonic Boom games, Shattered Crystal and especially Rise of Lyric. It helps that Sega delayed the game from its intended holiday 2015 release to nearly a year later to give the developers more time to work on it and ensure it doesn't suffer the same fate as its predecessors.

Sega's first attempt at Revisiting the Roots with Sonic the Hedgehog 4 was heavily panned by the fanbase of the original games as an awful successor to what are still considered the series' best games; and while it wasn't received with as much vitriol from reviewers at the time of release, they later agreed in retrospect that the game was a misfire. Like the Skyfall example above, Sonic 4 was subsequently ignored by Sonic Mania, which was not only praised as a proper sequel to the original games by both critics and fans, but garnered wide acclaim as the series' first truly exceptional entry in decades. Sonic Mania was also the first Sonic game on consoles released after the aforementioned Rise of Lyric, which is considered a top contender alongside Sonic 2006 as the worstSonic game in the series.

The Elder Scrolls: Arena wasn't bad for its time, featuring things like day/night cycles, seasons (with changing weather), holidays, and an advanced lighting engine, but despite having a rather large world, there wasn't anything particularly interesting to see or do, with a fairly generic setting and a clichéd plot (evil chancellor usurps emperor, have to collect 8 magic staff pieces to beat him). Then along came Daggerfall, which expanded the world (both in size and in richness) by several orders of magnitude, and added tons of things to do (dozens of factions to join! Vampirism! Lycanthropy! Real estate!), one of the most detailed character creators seen in a CRPG, and a well-written plot with twists and political intrigue galore (as well as bugs and glitches galore).

And then Morrowind happend, picking all the good bits of Daggerfall and multiplying them ten-folds. It also included Wide Open Sandbox that filled the world with dozens of things to do and places to walk to, rather than just making it huge, while excellent mod support allowed the somewhat dodgy game to survive for years thanks to modders support and secure Bethesda's position in the industry.

Backyard Basketball on the PS2 improved on everything Backyard Basketball on the PC, released two years earlier, had. There were no glitches, the game never freezes, there are NBA teams, and there are 9 more playable characters (while removing 1). There are even unlockable powerups!

Contra 4 came after four consecutive installments that sat poorly with fans of the series (two lame PS1 releases and two so-so PS2 releases) and whipped the series back into what it should be.

Mega Man 8 is considered to be a fairly lackluster game in the Classic series, with incredibly bad (though hilarious) voice acting and annoying gameplay elements like the snowboarding sections and Rush's function in the game being changed entirely, causing the Classic series to sputter to a halt with only a single Gaiden Game coming afternote two in Japan, though the second was for the obscure Wonderswan. Then, over a decade later, Capcom decided to go back to Mega Man's 8-bit roots with the much better received Mega Man 9.

Mega Man Battle Network had shades of Obvious Beta as Capcom was still experimenting with fine-tuning the battle system. The second game refined many mechanics on top of better writing, such that it, with the third game, would be fondly remembered as the best of the Battle Network series. The fifth game is this to the fourth by virtue of actually having a plot, while the sixth game does this to the fifth with even better writing (less of an Idiot Plot, for instance) and mechanics.

Mega Man Star Force's second game was hard to take even for the people who liked the first one, but the third game made up for it in incredibly unexpected ways, to a degree that some consider it the best in the entirety of the Battle Network/Star Force continuity.

The fangame Mega Man: A Day in the Limelight had a really clever idea (take Mega Man 2 and let you play as the Robot Masters from the first game), but it wasn't well-executed at all; the Robot Masters were either too similar or too weak, the level design was either barely-changed from the first game or just incredibly tedious, and the design was overall shoddy. A Day in the Limelight 2 (Robot Masters from 2, levels from 3) fixed all these problems, making the Robot Masters all distinct and playable in their own right, allowing you to switch between them, and heavily reworking the levels to accommodate their abilities or just add some polish. It's generally seen as having delivered on the promise of the original, and in some ways even improved on Mega Man 3.

And then, the relatively few flaws and lack of depth found in Legacy of Goku II were completely gone in Buu's Fury, which added an expanded range of special moves, such RPG basics as equipment and shops, and the ability to block.

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai was generally considered a playable-if-nothing-special fighting game that captured some of the essence of the series, but also was criticized for the blocky graphics, simplistic combat, and tedious method for unlocking extras. Budokai 2 did improve several things (namely the graphics), but it wasn't until Budokai 3 where Dimps truly started to step things up. Budokai 3 was not only a much better DBZ game than its predecessors, but it was quite popular with gamers in general, due to vastly improved fighting mechanics, more individualized physical combos for each character, greater variety in special moves (which you could do on the fly), gorgeous cel-shaded graphics, unlocking extras being made much easier and much less tedious, a single-player campaign titled Dragon Universe that gave the game near-infinite replay value, the inclusion of Beam Struggles and the actual ability to fly into or from the air, and a roster that not only spans throughout the entirety of the main DBZ story, but also from the original Dragon Ball, the Broly and Cooler movies, and some of GT as well.

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi had a creative enough idea for a fighting engine, but it didn't really work that well; Camera Screw was a recurring problem and the whole thing felt a bit unwieldy. The second game tightened up the fighting mechanics a lot, expanded the roster, restored the popular Dragon Universe campaign-style, and added more options... and then the third, after tightening them up a little more, proceeded to make basically every character ever associated with the series playable, while adding in a big pile of quirky "recreate the series" elements. It's a close race between those two games and Budokai 3 for the title of "best Dragon Ball game."

Ultimate Tenkaichi and Battle of Z had good ideas (faithful recreation of the anime's aesthetics and custom characters in the former, four-on-four team combat in the latter) that were poorly executed. While made by a different developer, Dimps's Dragon Ball Xenoverse is a marked improvement over those games, with improved combat, a new story that puts a twist on the DBZ mythos, and expanded character customization. It's also an improvement over Dragon Ball Online, of which it is a blatant Spiritual Successor to.

On a larger scale, Dragon Ball Fighter Z marked the first time a DBZ game was able to become popular on a mainstream level due to its presentation and accessibility, whereas all previous games were of a comparatively lower quality and primarily appealed to existing fans of the games.

Astonishia Story was an RPG originally made for PCs in the mid-1990s and remained exclusively a Korean property until 2006, when the game was remade for the PSP and distributed worldwide. The port hadn't aged well at all, and the lackluster localization effort by Ubisoft didn't help. Three years later, Astonishia Story 2 (titled Crimson Gem Saga in non-Asian countries) was released to a much warmer reception, with tighter character development, a retooled battle and skill system that emphasizes combination attacks, much less Forced Level-Grinding, and a better translation by the team at Atlus.

Luminous Arc for the DS was an Cliché Storm of an SRPG with a particularly Narmish voice acting in every. Single. Chapter. The next game, Luminous Arc 2 moves the story to another world with a better plot, vastly improved voice acting and a more streamlined user interface. The fact that they added a fast forward button, as well as bringing in Multiple Endings (which are further expanded in Luminous Arc 3) helps a lot.

Thunder Force III was a huge improvement over its rather average predecessor Thunder Force II, they got rid of the annoying overhead scrolling stages (which were all that the obscure first Thunder Force game had to offer), improved the graphics and music, and made the gameplay a lot better. Thunder Force IV and Thunder Force V continued on the tradition of awesomeness and were pretty much the peak of the franchise. Unfortunately, Sequelitis took effect after that.

Assassin's Creed I had really good Le Parkour gameplay and the beginnings of an interesting Ancient Conspiracy story, but was burdened with boring characters and levels, padding, and repetitive side quests and assassinations. Assassin's Creed II had a likable main character, levels that were memorable, and missions that were actually fun.

After the terrible reception ending of Assassin's Creed III received, along complains about boring setting and bland characters, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag decided to go in completely different direction. Since the only thing that didn't caught any flak in III were the ship sections, Black Flag is build entirely around that. And what could be better than delivering a pirate game that takes a step back from the increasingly convoluted Ancient Conspiracy and focuses on engaging gameplay and spoofing just how silly the whole Assassins vs. Templars plot became during the last few add-ons. The game is so refreshing some players even consider it was a missed opportunity for Ubisoft to launch a new franchise, dedicated to piracy.

Compare Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem to the original Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. While the latter was a good game that helped establish an entire genre it was plagued with a terrible inventory system, staves didn't give EXP, and some classes couldn't promote despite their promoted versions existing (Armor knight/general and Hunter/horseman for example). Then the former comes and fixes most of the gameplay flaws as well as much needed character and story development and wraps it up with a more streamlined version of Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light.

Red Steel was an ambitious shooter/swordplay launch title for the Wii marred by bad swordplay controls and an overall rushed presentation. With the implementation of the Wii MotionPlus allowing for more precise controls, Red Steel 2 is being hailed as what its predecessor should have been and even being regarded as one of the best-looking Wii games.

Just Cause was a Wide Open Sandbox game with a few nice ideas (like giving you a parachute you can use at almost any time) some beautiful vistas, and a gargantuan open world to explore, but had clumsy controls, kind of boring characters, the world was fairly bland and repetitive, and it was definitely not something you'd want to pay full price for. Just Cause 2, however, vastly improves your ability to use the grappling hook in conjunction with the parachute, all but allowing you to fly around the landscape, and has tons of things for you to blow up whenever you want, literally thousands of collectibles, and a much more interesting and varied world, making it a solid A-list title. It's worth noting that the first Just Cause was Avalanche Studios' first ever release, and they obviously spent a lot of time learning from their mistakes for the sequel.

Later in the series, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops was a competently made game that showed great potential with its army building mechanics. However, the controls suffered on the PSP, the story (despite a great villain) felt more like a side-story, and the army building mechanic showed potential, but didn't quite live up to it with a lack of variety and frustrating issues. Then came Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Under Kojima's direction (unlike Portable Ops), Peace Walker's controls were more refined, its story felt more connected to the overall picture (particularly with Big Boss' Character Development) and the potential that Portable Ops showed with its army building mechanics were thoroughly lived up to, with an entire, constantly-growing, base of operations, a variety of options that expanded over the course of the entire game, and with the frustrating features simplified or removed. All that along with being the biggest Metal Gear game ever made at the time, meant it blew Portable Ops away.

Söldner-X: Himmelssturmer was a serviceable side-scrolling shoot-em-up with excellent visuals, but was mainly held back by its sluggishness and brevity. Its sequel, Söldner-X 2: Final Prototype improves on both of these aspects while adding more playable ships and weapons, a revamped power-up and combo system (no more power-down items), and assorted challenges and an expansion pack to keep the game fresh even after completion.

Touhou: In-between the standard danmaku games, which have been slowly improving, ZUN has done a bit of experimenting. The concepts he reuses tend to be much better the second time around:

Shoot The Bullet was mostly made for the sake of having a game to go with the fanbook's release, and it shows. The game is fairly short, has a lot of very similar patterns (Spinning! Streaming! Spinning while streaming!), mostly fairly ugly patterns, an unpolished UI, and is really hard, even by Touhou standards. Double Spoiler is longer, has more variety, fixed most of STB's annoying issues, and is reasonably clearable by the average Touhou player.

Then there is the fan game Koumajou Densetsu — where the second game has received massive improvements over the first as well as added really well done voice acting.

The original Shining Force, while still a fun Strategy RPG, was riddled with exploitablebugs and poor class balance, while having too gradual a difficulty curve. Later entries have not only fixed these problems, but also introduced new concepts, such as summoning and weapon skill levels, to add to the variety of the gameplay.

LEGO Island 2 is mostly a Contested Sequel, but the most common opinion on it is that it was killed by long load times, dull and lifeless voice acting, poor animation, glitchy physics, low replay value, and poorly explained mini-games. Lego Island Xtreme Stunts on the other hand fixes nearly all of these problems, mostly by adding far more replay value, shortening the load times, explaining the minigames better, and having far less glitches.

The Adventure had unresponsive controls, Fake Difficulty in losing whip power after only one hit and extremely slow gameplay. Sub-weapons and such were absent, and hearts, normally used for subweapon power, restored energy. Belmont's Revenge rectified this in many ways, with only losing whip power if you die or get hit by the snake tower's fireballs. Christopher Belmont still moves slowly, but nowhere near as slow as his first adventure. The much more responsive controls, a non-linear level select format, like in Mega Man, even better music and a password system were welcome additions. The sub-weapon system reappeared, albeit it's only limited to the Cross (or Axe in the non-Japanese versions) and the Holy Water.

Deus Ex fans, following the lukewarm reception to Deus Ex: Invisible War, were rightfully skeptical that Human Revolution could live up to the original, with the long time frame and the closure of Ion Storm with a new development team taking over. It's an almost unanimous opinion that the original game will never be matched, but many agree that Human Revolution is the worthy followup that Invisible War wasn't.

Outpost was a turn-based colony management game that was well hyped before its release, but it turned out to just be Simcity IN SPACE! Not only that, it had several bugs, and was basically unfinished. Outpost 2 on the other hand, took some of the key plot elements from the first, and made it into an enjoyably complex real time strategy game with a heavy focus on colony management. The story (which ignored the first in almost every conceivable fashion) was very detailed and interesting, becoming a tale told from the point of view of two factions, both trying to survive and avoid extinction. The inclusion of the story in the form of a novella, along with all the well-researched science (the game leans heavily towards hard science fiction), makes the game more enjoyable than one would expect from its predecessor.

The first Arc the Lad is a fairly average SRPG: The battle system is fast-paced but flawed, while its characters are likeable but severely underdeveloped; and to top it off, the game is criminally short. The sequel, on the other hand, has a much more detailed (and darker) plot, more characters with more interplay amongst themselves, a relatively revised battle system and a longer campaign. To this day, Arc the Lad II is considered to be the apex of the series, and all games that came after are generally agreed to have failed to live up to it. As for the first, fans usually recommend it on the grounds of "well, it's the first in the series... also, the second one is a direct sequel."

The original Hyperdimension Neptunia had an interesting concept — the whole series is a metaphor for the Console Wars — but was critically panned for its awkward pace, Schizophrenic Difficulty, and frustrating game mechanics, including the inability to sell old equipment or even use items during battle as in most RPGs. Idea Factory and Compile Heart took these criticisms to heart with Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, reworking the game almost from the ground up with a new battle system, Item Crafting, and better implementations of some of the systems used in the first game (such as quests and the "Shares" system). While still not a critical hit, some reviewers who hated the first game were pleased with the improvements in mk2, saying that mk2 actually came close to being a "good" or even "great" game. The first game was also given a pseudo-Updated Re-release (technically both the original and the remake take place in separate universes) with gameplay based on Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory that is widely considered to be the superior version.

Record of Agarest War, another Idea Factory/Compile Heart series, experienced this with Agarest War 2. The clunky strategy game-type battle system from the original game and its prequel was replaced by a new system that while somewhat quirky, is also easy to control and makes the game's difficulty curve look less like the Swiss Alps. This is probably also one of the only game series that was improved with the addition of Random Encounters, as opposed to having to fight three to eight long strategy battles of random difficulty before reaching a safe spot.

While the fourth and fifth Generation of Chaos gamesnote the first two to be released outside of Japan were met with general indifference, the sixth game in the series, Pandora's Reflection (a joint effort between Idea Factory and Sting Entertainment), opted for a much simpler and more streamlined approach than its predecessors. Generation 6 scored better review scores in the U.S. than either of the previous two games.

The first Sengoku game on the Neo Geo is a sub-par brawler with some cheap enemies, stiff controls, and power-ups that are likely to transform you into a worthless character. The sequel is an improvement, but not by much and still bears several of the major problems the original game had. Sengoku 3 is better than the first two combined (to the point of being one of the most beloved beat 'em ups in general) and features much better gameplay and amazing visuals.

Fallen Enchantress, the second game in the Elemental series, was a deliberate attempt by Stardock to fix the numerous problems that plagued its predecessor, Elemental - War of Magic — namely the busted A.I. opponents (who could do nothing but attack) and the mountains of other bugs. It still lacks an online multiplayer component, but the overall reception to Fallen Enchantress has been much better than War of Magic. It was done again with Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes, which added new stories and factions.

Two Worlds II fixed pretty much everything in the first game while retaining the What Could Have Been elements, including an innovative spell system. The first game suffered from numerous glitches, missing animations, and extremely cheesy dialogue and its Xbox 360 port was a disaster, which turned a buggy but playable game into a trainwreck. The second game is mostly remembered for its HUGE amount of content and a variety of multiplayer modes.

Robot Arena 2, while not a well-known game was a massive improvement over the original game. The sequel had much more customization options in regard to the chassis and weapons you could use, better AI, and an actual physics engine.

Spec Ops was a middle-of-the-road shooter franchise from the PlayStation 1 days, perhaps only notable as being one of the first franchises set in the modern day while World War II was the standard setting for a military FPS. Flash forward about a decade, and the series is revived with Spec Ops: The Line, considered one of the best examples of storytelling in gaming ever.

Borderlands was relatively well received and had fun gameplay, but the storyline was non-existent note unless you read the box on the left side of the screen where you accepted missions, but this wasn't voiced and you weren't told that it's anything but filler, the characters weren't all that developed, and it tended towards Real Is Brown. Borderlands 2 addressed basically all the weaknesses; the storyline was much more complex, the characters (both the PC and NPCs) were much more developed, and the settings were far more varied. In general, the production values were ratcheted up in every way, though at the same time the second game also marked an increase in meme and pop culture humor that drove a wedge into the fanbase.

After the pinnacle of the Metal Slug series with Metal Slug 3, the series suffered from SNK's bankruptcy and transformation into SNK Playmore. While the gameplay didn't suffer too badly, 4 ended up with recycled backgrounds and Marco and Eri getting replaced with two new characters, and 5 was rushed out the door before it was finished, resulting in a game devoid of a story and most of the series' personality (especially egregious with the Final Boss, who's a giant winged, silhouetted demon who comes right out of nowhere with no foreshadowing or explanation) and a lot more linear than previous games. Not only was Metal Slug 6 released in full and with no recycled backgrounds, but it gave every character unique perks (like Fio starting every life with a heavy machine gun and getting more ammo from pickups, and Tarma having several vehicle-related perks) and includes Ralf and Clark from Ikari Warriors as playable characters. 6 is considered by many to be the proper revival of the series.

While Tecmo Cup Soccer introduced a fair hybrid between soccer and RPG, the game is still a looseadaptation of Captain Tsubasa with rather clunky menu systems and controls. Then comes Captain Tsubasa Vol.II: Super Striker, the sequel that makes huge improvements. It fixed all problems with the menus, has better interfaces, has faster pace, has its own interpretation of the series' plot, and is satisfyingly challenging.

Crazy Cars, one of Titus Software's earliest games, had hideously ugly graphics and boring course design. Crazy Cars II had much cleaner graphics, but the roads remained strangely empty. Crazy Cars III made its predecessor look like an Obvious Beta.

NES Remix is a decent Minigame Game that had a somewhat undercooked selection of classic NES games—genuine classics like Super Mario Bros and Donkey Kong feature prominently, while Nintendo's early sports titles (Baseball, Tennis, Golf, etc.) are included almost as an afterthought. However, the game was successful enough to spawn a sequel in NES Remix 2, which features a higher quality selection of games (including Kirby's Adventure, Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3), more creative remix stages, and the ability to view replays of other players' best times.

Crusader Kings: The original game, while it had its fans, was definitely a flawed game, with a Troubled Production and quite a lot of bugs. Crusader Kings II, on the other hand, has received by far the smoothest launch of any Paradox Interactive game to date, and received almost universal acclaim from the fans. Expansions like Sword of Islam, Legacy of Rome and The Old Gods have only served to make it even better.

2 is, according to Word of God, better than its predecessor Craz'd! And it shows with the more polished gameplay and aesthetics, the latter of which feel more cohesive and charming despite still being erratic.

Motor Toon Grand Prix had a lot of promise for a Mascot Racer, such as the incorporation of realistic driving elements like working suspensions and slipstream, but it was brought down by a lack of content and a wonky physics engine. The sequel made the physics a lot better and added plenty of new content such as tracks, secret characters, and mini-games, all while improving the graphics.

The first Tekken was not a particularly remarkable game, and was seen as a Virtua Fighter clone, featuring blocky graphics, cheap music, and boss characters who were direct clones, as well as not many special moves. The home versions did not have any extra modes apart from Versus and Options modes. Tekken 2 addressed all the issues and added a lot more cool characters and many modes.

Even the most staunch defenders of the franchise will find it difficult to deny that the very first Just Dance was practically the epitome of Shovelware, with barebones gameplay and extremely dodgy motion detection. Then the sequel came around and fixed all of the flaws of the original while adding in a boatload of new features (most notably DLC and Duet dances). Each sequel from then on has generally been regarded as an improvement over the previous installment.

Gameplay-wise, the original Sound Voltex is pretty neat for its time, with its use of analog knobs to bring something new to "falling notes" Rhythm Games as well as sound effects that give the impression of mixing the track in a live set. However, its tracklist mostly comprises remixes of existing BEMANI songs of questionable quality (let's put it this way: LamazeP of "PoPiPo" fame personallyapologized for his remix of "Second Heaven"), So Bad, It's GoodVocaloid songs, and a handful of Touhou arranges. Sound Voltex II -infinite infection- is when the series started to pick up, introducing a lot of new songs at launch that were much better received, many of which are originals, helping to give the series a better sense of identity.

The general consensus for Watch_Dogs 2 is that it's surprisingly much better than the mediocre first game in the series. It has a more likeable cast of characters, improved controls (especially while driving vehicles), new ways of solving hacking puzzles, and it doesn't take itself so seriously.

While the original MUSECA is a decent game, it suffers from some needlessly complex mechanics pertaining to Graficas that are not easily understood, especially by players in US arcades as many of them don't speak Japanese well. MÚSECA 1 + 1/2 recitifies this by making Grafica mechanics more simple (you only need to worry about one stat and one of five elements, and their unlocked effects if any don't affect your score or mess with the interface), making it easier to unlock Grafica (instead of a sequence of objectives or a random pull, just find the Grafica in the Mission mode list and use Graficas with high enough attack power to complete the mission), and finally, making Grafica completely optional (there's a "simple" mode where you just play songs for score like in other music games, charts are unlocked simply by purchasing them from the songlist, and even if you decide to use a Grafica all it does is decorate the interface and gain EXP for leveling up).

As far as side games go, the little-respected Gun Survivor series was mostly known for being insubstantial fluff among its first three installments (Survivor, Survivor 2, and the non-REDino Stalker), but then the fourth and final one, Dead Aim, was praised as surprisingly playable and fun.

Stuntman was a PS2 title that featured realistic handling physics and an interesting twist on the driving genre, but ultimately received meager popularity due to its punishing difficulty. Stuntman: Ignition, released as a console-generation-bridging title (PS2, PS3 and 360) featured a completely overhauled game system that kept the games difficulty nearly-intact, but made it much more fair for the player. Didn't hurt that it was also a much better looking game.

For all the praise NieR gets for its story, cast, and interesting gameplay ideas, most people agree the actual gameplay is serviceable at best and outright obnoxious at worst. NieR: Automata improved on almost all regards in the gameplay department thanks to the involvement of PlatinumGames and maintains the fantastic narrative and cast that the first game was known for, making it Taro Yoko's most critically acclaimed work to date by a wide margin.

The Onechanbara series were known for cheap not so good or mediocre games that were like a weird cross betweeen Devil May Cry and Dynasty Warriors, until Z: Kagura came out and became more DMC-like/Bayonetta-esque. While not perfect, it had two new characters, better level design (previous games were full of padding in stages), bosses that put up a fight, and enemy variety other than just zombies. Z2: Chaos took it even further with four playable characters that you could switch on the fly at any time, and new power-ups that were useful.

Among the Twisted Metal games, Twisted Metal III is universally considered the worst. Twisted Metal 4, however, is seen as being better than III and almost as good as the first two games.

Knack was a divisive game when it launched with the PlayStation 4, seen largely as a mediocre showcase for the new console and an inferior successor to Mark Cerny's previous work with the Crash Bandicoot series. Despite the odds, it sold well enough to warrant a sequel four years later. Knack II smoothed out the previous game's difficulty and made it more forgiving, and gave Knack greater variety in combat options, resulting in a more enjoyable experience overall.

While Final Fantasy Tactics Advance wasn't a bad game overall, it was met with mixed reception by the fans due to the overall tone being Lighter and Softer compared to Final Fantasy Tactics; Tactics was about war and betrayal while Advance deals with a group of adolescents that use escapism to avoid life's problems while the main protagonist tries to get them to face reality. The overall difficulty was also broken beyond recognition thanks to many of a Game-Breaker (stealing abilities without having to learn them the normal way and making attacks so accurate that instant death skills made battles a joke, for example). The law system was widely hated due to how restrictive it made battles, even with the ability to manipulate said laws. Final Fantasy Tactics A2 addresses all of the problems of the previous game and deals them out in a nice package; the story is treated as just an adventure to have a good time on with some darker themes mixed in, the Game Breakers were nerfed (while some do still exist, they aren't as easy to abuse as they were before), and the law system was simplified and made less punishing for those who break the rules.

The Shall We Date? game Destiny Ninja 2 has proved to be far more popular and enduring than the original (now-discontinued) Destiny Ninja game, due in large part to its more kickass female protagonist and more diverse and interesting cast of guys.

The original Titanfall was an online-focused shooter that, although it did feature some interesting and unique mechanics, was deemed by many to be a merely OK shooter with some significant issues. Its sequel was much better received, earning high scores from players and critics alike for its short-but-sweet single-player campaign, compelling multiplayer, regular updates and, to the relief of many, its player-friendly business model. Despite not selling well, the game still has a decent sized player-base.

While it's a little muddy as to what exactly DJMAX Respect is a sequel to (SUPERBEAT XONiCnote the last game that can be loosely defined as a DJMAX game; unique take but it features a lot of wonky, outdated mechanics like only one difficulty per button mode, a scoring system that punishes anything short of an All Combo, and different songs being available on different stages, DJMAX RAYnote the last game to carry the DJMAX name; decent gameplay but notoriously unoptimized and known for tons of Microtransactions, DJMAX Portable 3note the last game to use traditional DJMAX gameplay; interesting new remix modes but removal of most traditional button modes, lots of grinding for unlocks, limited songlist, and horrendously draining on the PSP's battery), many agree that it surpasses all of them in quality, due to the expansive songlist that continues to grow thanks to DLC updates and the return and refinement of traditional DJMAX Portable gameplay (4-, 5-, 6-, and 8-button modes, and scoring that is now more focused on accuracy than building a huge combo). It also shows that good Rhythm Games can exist on traditional consoles without needing expensive peripherals that are only usable for specific games to be enjoyable (although it hasn't stopped makers of arcade-style controllers from designing Respect-specific controllers anyway, for those who still wanna go the extra mile).

Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories is usually seen as basically unplayable, with monotonous mechanics, a ridiculous amount of Level Grinding, and positively obnoxious difficulty, though it sold well due to being the only console Yu-Gi-Oh! game at the time. Its sorta-sequel, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses, cranked down the difficulty quite a bit, reworked the Level Grinding to be actually satisfying and sensible, and completely overhauled the gameplay to add actual strategy besides "play strongest monster and hope you can make a fusion."

The 'sillies' that run alongside Ctrl+Alt+Del have fewer panels (so the punchline comes at the end), stylised art (a complete lack of B^U) and a steadily rotating roster of secondary characters including the Grim Reaper. On the other hand, they don't have a set schedule.

Platypus Comix's "2008 Character Strike" series brought some comics that relied heavily on old material, as well as a simplistic Family Guy parody. These provided a few giggles, but not enough to hide the fact these ranked among the cheapest stories at the website. Then, the Head Executive decided to hire Spider-Man to replace the usual characters, resulting in True Believers. Released a few weeks after Marvel's polarizing One More Day, True Believers sent Spidey and Mary Jane Watson on a suspenseful, emotionally-driven adventure to prevent JoeQuesadilla from forcefully ending their contented and iconic marriage. Peter Paltridge went on to declare this one of the best comics he ever wrote.

The Bad Webcomics Wiki took this view of Cheer!. The comic it spun out of, The Wotch, received a scathing review for being seen as ugly, fetishistic, offensive, and badly-written, with special attention being paid to the arc that introduced the characters in Cheer! for being among the worst in its run. By contrast, the review of Cheer! was a lot kinder, claiming that the comic was nothing spectacular, but it was better-drawn and better-written, with likable characters and clear attempts to avert or even deconstruct the sexism and perversion of its roots.

The early proto-Bugs Bunny short "Elmer's Candid Camera" was a total disaster, suffering from poor characterization, mediocre gags and positively abysmal timing and pacing, and as such received such bashing fromChuck Jones, the director of the short, in his autobiography. Tex Avery learned from Chuck's mistakes, and promptly remade the cartoon as the first real Bugs Bunny cartoon "A Wild Hare".

Ghouls Rule, the first Monster High DVD movie isn't terrible, but it suffered from a lot of writing and plot problems. Its sequel 13 Wishes was a vast improvement in every way and is considered by many fans to be one of the franchise's high points. And while Frights, Camera, Action was pretty mediocre and had a bad case of The Scrappy, Freaky Fusion is delightfully weird and introduced several Ensemble Dark Horses to the fandom.

Season 5 of Voltron: Legendary Defender is considered to be a major improvement over the filler-heavy season 4, due to revisiting storylines such as Operation Kuron, Pidge's search for her father, Keith's Galra lineage and Haggar's memories. Lance and Hunk being de-flanderized was also well-received.

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